Facebook is working on a standalone camera app for live streaming

Facebook doesn't have a good track record when it comes to standalone apps, but that isn't stopping it from going back to the drawing board.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a team of Facebook engineers in London are working on a standalone camera app that will allow you to record video and begin live streaming (presumably via Facebook Live). The app would open to the camera to encourage you to capture and post photos and videos.

Snapchat similarly opens straight to a camera and allows you to broadcast snaps to followers, though it doesn't have a real-time, live-streaming mode. The Wall Street Journal speculated that Facebook is in investing in mobile video in order to get its 1.6 billion users sharing more content.

It'll also help Facebook compete with Snapchat, a photo-messaging app it once tried buying. Snapchat later built a Snapchat-like app, called Slingshot, but it was killed alongside other standalone apps like Rooms and Riffs when Facebook shut down its in-house app studio Creative Labs.

We don't know yet what the new camera app will be called. All we know so far is that it's just a prototype and may never see a public release. Still, it shows Facebook is exploring ways to bolster Facebook Live.

Also, keep in mind the new camera app is different from Facebook Camera, another photo app Facebook launched in 2012 but eventually killed in 2014 because it too failed to gain any traction.